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Edit: never mind the other post, will put it on the contact page. Gist is, don’t contact me for selling or guest posts or anything promoting your product or offering me money for links because I’ll tell you to piss off.

So, it’s likely I won’t need to challenge the BPD diagnosis, given that I have seemingly proved that I have manic depression. Forgive me if I don’t crack open the fucking bubbly. It was never about my little bipolar card being taken from me. It was about not wanting something inaccurate on my medical records. Not having bipolar disorder was a relief. It was a release. I wanted that part to be true.

I am probably somewhat manic. This is what is said. On the phone from Robert to the social worker, from her. The kind of words I never wanted him to hear. There’s the crisis team. There’s Drayton, the crisis centre. You’re not alone, if it gets too much to cope with. I wanted to keep him from that world. It destroyed Rob (my ex Rob, alas he and Robert share the same name so it is often confusing) and I and when I see him I still feel ashamed, because I want to be cured and better. My social worker thinks Robert is good for me. She says he is playful, that he comes into my little manic world, that he wears me out. He is not worried. I am probably manic. Less so than I was due to getting a night’s sleep on Saturday that I needed. Saturday was an awful day. I told Robert the truth that I had been drinking in the mornings to calm myself down. He was disappointed and angry (I am a demon on drink, I am horrible to him) so I went to get that Zopiclone prescription at the midnight pharmacy. As I did I got lost in Piccadilly, somewhere I know well. I was confused and couldn’t understand what people were saying to me. Literally could not understand their words. Could barely speak myself because my brain was crashing so spectacularly. Distracting me from everything, getting me lost. My happy happy mood started getting irritable, I started punching things, shouting, started losing my balance, genuine falling over and screaming in frustration because I couldn’t even control my hands long enough to steady myself.

I slept on Saturday. I woke up on Sunday, didn’t sleep that night, had an appointment where my social worker said I seemed calmer and I was. My sister texted me to ask if I was okay, and that, coupled with Robert’s angry disappointment, gave me a flash of what I must look like, what I could lose. So I took some Seroquel last night and slept again. I am calmer again today but realise I cannot stop shaking, still, and when I wake up, I start to shake and shake. My first reaction to taking Seroquel again was the need to vomit. So I had to take another 200mg. What to do.

What to do is the order of the day. I don’t want to start over. Medication? I don’t know. I said since I’m borderline apparently then I should have DBT. We both acknowledged it wouldn’t be helpful for me. Because, in my mind at least, my coping mechanisms are fine. There is fuck all wrong with me these days, except for mood swings. She agrees that they will not help that. I feel very angry. I don’t want this. I know things have been less than stable since I stopped taking medication. I was perpetually mildly depressed on it, but off it I know I have been unstable. I haven’t done much. I don’t get those creative hypomanias- I have loads of ideas but I can’t focus longer than three seconds to do much about them. I am two months behind in my book now. More than. I feel as though I am letting everyone down. And I don’t get help or at least try, I let them down, too. Everyone who has stood by in the past years. So many fucking years!

And I had Seroquel sleep, I woke up with a horrible headache, met Rob and now I am still shaky and know I’ll have to drug myself again, if I need to sleep. I only have four pills left, I threw the rest out and I’m sure I’ll ask for a prescription. The withdrawal was hell; I don’t know if I can go through it again, but natural sleep is hard and I don’t want to sleep because too much sleep makes me depressed. Right now I am crawling out of my skin.

My social worker thinks as long as I make sure I sleep I will be okay and that I don’t have to take medication if I don’t want to. If I get on a level I will still be discharged in September. She says a lot of people with bipolar disorder never come into contact with the community mental health team. So I can be out there in the world, too. I don’t know what the psychiatrist thinks but she said he’d be happy to write prescriptions for Seroquel so who knows. She thinks I have manic depression and says she expected this to happen, sooner, actually, than it did. But I don’t want it. I DON’T WANT IT. And if I take medication then it’s admitting it. I don’t want it. Somewhere, probably around the psychiatric appointment when once again I didn’t know what was wrong, didn’t think it was serious, was told it was not serious because I wasn’t in and out of hospital, I was pitched back into denial and relief, too, have spent the past few weeks saying, “There is nothing wrong” when people around me clearly disagree, looking at my shaking hands and kicking off my shoes to say, “I am fine”, and I was fine, I was happy and I am still happy, but I can’t stop shaking and I don’t want to be ill. Now I am back to the burning fucking rage I thought I had left behind, the horrible fucking knowledge that you can run, but you can’t hide. This isn’t fair. This isn’t fair. I probably sound a teenager, but it isn’t. I don’t know what to do, whether to take Seroquel regularly again and be an exhausted zombie or carry on and try harder.

Dressing up as clowns and playing Strip Netball at 6am is no penance for this.

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19 Responses

No, sweets, it is definitely not fair. I am angry for you. I wish that it wasn’t this way, and that things could just be slightly more simple. But you’ve handled everything that life has thrown at you thus far, and done so with a dark wit and mountains of courage. Please take care, and be gentle with yourself, if you can be.

Quetiapine is killer to play around with. As you know. getting used to and withdrawal I mean. See how you are off meds and how it goes to prove BP is a game my MH team have played. Dangerous way to see though. Take care there. x

I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and anxiety years ago and I got off all of the medication because it turned out food intolerances were causing all of my “crazy” symptoms. Have you ever looked into that? Check out my website.

I am also not sure about the quetiapine. Withdrawals are awful and initial side effects are awful, so I wonder if you really want to put yourself through that.

Then again I don’t know what else is an option. I’m sure there are medication combinations you haven’t tried, but do you want to get back on the medi-go-round?

I am glad you’ve come down a bit with some sleep though as it sounds like things were getting a little scary.

I think it is good you have Robert too. He will be there for you through the good and bad. That’s what relationships are about after all, but I can understand why you don’t want to put him through it. No one does, but it is not something we can control. He will cope.